Highlanders and Arden are the Big Winners at Pennine Tournament

The Highlanders claimed both the A and B grades at Pennine Tournament but Arden ended the weekend with the most points as they cleaned up the 2nd and 3rd places in the lower grades. It was perhaps though a tournament mostly decided by the torrential rain which struck on Sunday morning, leading to a number of teams forfeiting games and agreeing to call games a draw. The A grade sides agreed to call all three Sunday games a draw, in the B grade 2 games were called draws and in the C grade the combined Ashfields/Kent team pulled out of their 3rd/4th place play off match against Arden. The rain only lasted for about two hours but it was enough to dampen the spirits of a lot of players who were meant to be playing at that time, particularly in the higher grades.

There were only 3 teams in each of the A and B grades and so they were playing each other twice on each day. This undoubtedly had some influence on teams being willing to call games draws. The Highlanders sides had won all their matches on the Saturday and so by agreeing to draws on the Sunday the teams simply maintained the status quo set the day before. In the A grade this meant that the Highlanders finished top, Cotswold in second place and Celyn in third.

In the B grade the Highlanders again led after day 1 with two impressive displays and both Arden and Kent agreed to draws with them on the Sunday. However Arden and Kent did play each other again on the Sunday and the win for Kent meant they took 2nd place from Arden, despite having lost to Arden in their first match on the Saturday.

The C grade ended in a victory for the home side Pennine, though they did need a couple of bits of luck to make it happen. The C grade was played in two separate pools, with the winner of each pool going through to the final and at first it seemed like Pennine had lost their pool to the combined Ashfields/Kent team but then the result of the match between the two sides was overturned and the win was awarded to Pennine, as Ashfield had changed a horse between chukkas. It was a multi-horse tournament and so changing horses between games was permitted but not between chukkas within a match. Ashfields mistakenly thought they could change between chukkas and so the tournament arbitration committee decided that they had broken the rules and the win went to Pennine, meaning that they topped the pool.

Pennine’s good fortune didn’t end there as in the final they played Arden and were drawing 9 all at the end of normal time. It should have gone to golden goal but Arden’s first section, who should have gone back on to play the golden goal time period, had already gone back to their pens and untacked and washed down their horses. The Arden players showed no great desire to get retacked up to play the golden goal and after some discussion about whether the second section of Arden could go on in their place it was decided that they couldn’t and Pennine were awarded the win. Arden’s gloom though was lifted somewhat by the fact that they also received third place as Ashfields/Kent decided to not play their 3rd and 4th play off match due to the rain.

In the D grade it was Vale Impi who claimed victory as they defeated all the other 4 teams in the grade convincingly. Even the sending off of Karen Smith in their final match couldn’t stop them scoring freely as their number 1s in Jack Bull and Katy Long looked on particularly good form. Katy picked up Best Senior Horse and Rider Combination for the tournament, an award made all the more impressive by the fact this was her first tournament back after being hospitalised from an injury she suffered in pre-season training. Arden once again picked up second place to add to their list of podium finishes and it was the combined Pennine/Ashfields side which picked up third place.

The Juniors grade was won very convincingly by the UK Juniors side, which was really to be expected, and there were complaints that the UK Juniors and the other Junior sides benefited very little from the UK side being in the grade and that it would have been better if the UK Juniors had been played in a higher grade. Arden Juniors again claimed the runner up spot with Pennine in third place.